Mailwatch(ed) Forum

Does that work now? That sounds eminently taxable.

A parent can gift their house to a child and continue to live in it but, if they want to avoid inheritance tax, the parent will need to pay the child market rent. If they don't, HMRC classify it as a Gift with Reservation of Benefit (ie the parent is retaining benefit from the house, so it's not really a gift) and therefore, on the parent's demise, the property will still be taxable at market value.

Dan Neidle on inheritance tax. If I were Labour, I'd go for something like this on the grounds that inheritance tax is very unpopular. But you could equally collect more from it by keeping incidence for lower payers like it is and just eliminating some of the (apparently very easy) allowances that bigger estates claim.

You'll be amazed to hear this.

Pathetic.

Fuck me. Despite the source, I think this is probably true. Andrew fucking Gilligan for (opaquely funded) Policy Exchange.

The business case on this stuff, by the way, is absurdly conservative. I'm willing to bet very little if anything is included for replacing all those London-Scotland flights.

Indeed.

She's massively out of control. Sunak is too weak to sack her.

Sunak's just a complete waste of space. He didn't have the guts remove the whip from Dorries when she took the piss for two months so basically it's a green light for anyone to go rogue without fear of reprimand.

Sunak's got off very lightly if this is the limit of the revolt.

Amid continuing lobbying of Downing Street by opponents of the multimillion scheme and supporters fighting to preserve it, the Northern Research Group of Tory MPs appear willing to back a lengthy delay to the Birmingham-Manchester leg if a co-called “Charles line” connecting northern cities is preserved.

The Government under Bozo and Truss promises an extensive dedicated route that would have cost £40bn on 2019 prices (I assume). This was cut back to a £17bn core route, which angered lots of these MPs.

So the extent of the hardballing is what? You build that thing you already cut back, and we're fine? That's pretty feeble.

Oh and name it after the king.

Charlie line to Manchester would sound like a Happy Mondays song.

Good thread on the HS2 budget. The rise is about 40%, after inflation, adjusting for extra stuff added to it. Which isn't good, but.

Sadly a cross party collection of clowns have, for their own reasons, exaggerated the costs. Makes it much easier for the Government to lie and can a huge chunk of it.

Absolutely pathetic, once again.

What is the purpose of Sunak? As has been said of him, he's a man with no hinterland and given his previous career, why did he go into politics?

This cropped up elsewhere, apologies if you've already seen it:

How is this going to work? Whitehall to micromanage bus lanes and speed humps?

Sunak doesn’t stand to gain personally from inheritance tax cuts. The shifty little bastard already has that one covered
https://x.com/danneidle/status/17073813 ... Dkr8MiQKBg

Sunak doing the rounds with BBC local radio and doing about as well as Truss. There’s no respect for this man, what a shame.

I've just watched Sunak being interviewed on Calendar news which covers Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. Despite the fact that the interview was meant to reassure the residents of Scampton about plans to house 2000 asylum seekers at the local Airforce base he only granted the station a five minute interview.

The journalist had clearly done her homework and Rishi had clearly not done his homework. He offered no reassurances to concerned residents but instead trotted out his pledge to stop the small boats. The interviewer pointed out that if the boats stopped tomorrow the 2000 asylum seekers would still end up at the camp because of backlogs in processing applications.

The interview then raised the issue of local government funding pointing out that while affluent Surrey gets good levels of government funding deprived areas like Hull have done less well. She asked him how he squared this with the governments pledge to level up. He first tried to argue that all councils had received a good settlement this year. The journalists then asked how that would make up up for 13 years of underfunding. Instead of answering the question he simply claimed that he didn't recognise the figures that the journalist was quoting. He said he had seen figures that painted a different picture but failed to elaborate on these figures.

If this is how he performs when questioned by a local journalist it is easy to see why he continues to keep avoid serious TV grillings.

They never get it, do they?

These young journalists are as tenacious as starving beasts, and are doing their best to land themselves a career-defining job on a national outlet.

Sunak and co. only ever see those who have been both bought/brought in to the "client" fold and have been hand-picked by their media operation. Add to that, these are northerners and therefore as thick as education-deprived pig shit.

Long may it continue!

Yup, nothing to lose, everything to gain, and time to prepare.